Restoration

 

“Skunk Tracks to the Studio” Phone Photo DS

I was like Martha today, concerns filled my mind (Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things… Book of Luke). Snow was piled deep on the stairs. I did not go out on this Sunday, as is my habit. I knitted, listened to a podcast from Loyola Press and had a long bath perfumed with Emozione.

I dressed in my white paint-soiled fleece and jeans although I would not venture over to the studio. Skunk paw prints tracked over the melting patio snow disappearing under the building. We had called a truce for now.

I prayed. I breathed. I wanted to work but was tired on this Sabbath day. Run-off gurgled in the drainpipes. I could see the wind blowing the tops of the fir trees.

As I thought about sitting in the sunny window in the moss green chair from Germany, I picked up a forgotten copy of “The House by the Sea”, May Sarton’s journal. This is her entry for January 19^th, 1976:

“It’s been a hard week, bitterly cold again. Yesterday was ten below zero, today, eight below, and even the brilliant sunshine feels cold as it shines off ice underfoot and across the frozen snow on the field. I do not feel very well, although the fever has gone. However, not being able to push very hard – even writing a letter a day has seemed an enormous effort – I enjoy this house, the space and light, the plant window full of flowers, cyclamen, begonias, the browallia I brought in from the garden still a marvelous deep purplish blue. The little orange tree is covered with round oranges, and, amazing to say, the lavender star-of-Bethlehem still falls in showers of little flowers. A final bowl of paper white narcissus takes my breath away with its intoxicating sweetness as I go past, for such perfume really does seem like a miracle with the frozen earth outdoors.”

I notice movement in my mood. I feel hopeful. I have been touched by beauty and have been refreshed. The Spirit keeps the Sabbath.

“He restores my inner person. He guides me in right paths for the sake of his own name.” Book of Psalms